This is Andrew Hovell's blog. He lives in Northern England. He plans for a living. He likes tea

May 01, 2018

I was 13 or 14 when it came out, playing team tennis. I loved playing, I viscerally hated the culture in British tennis.Wear white, follow the rules, juniors always make way for seniors on the court and, worst of all, in lessons and team coaching, play like they did 40 years ago.

This ad represented everything I felt, and to be honest, everything I felt as a teenager. It was just the right time.

It helped sell a hell of a lot of overpriced tennis gear for Nike, but also made loads of young tennis players feel like they could take on the establishment. It didn't matter how you played, how you showed up, as long as performed and had a bloody good time doing it.

I think strategy folks could do with a hefty dose of ignoring 'the rules' in service of actually getting results too.

The dull arguments over brand models, including the latest fashion over 'purpose'.

TV is dead, TV is brilliant.

Outspend your market share, build fame.

And the new, equally constricting rules over big data.

It's really easy to hide behind the models and received wisdom and a lot harder to put your neck on the line, tear up the rules and try and do stuff that works .

But not only is that more stimulating and more satisfying, it will also create disproportionate success for you and your clients.

April 20, 2018

Fall for the latest thing. I know I’ve said don’t read advertising books, but I would say it’s worth reading Paul Feldwick’s ‘The Anatomy of Humbug’. Mostly because he doesn’t really tell you how advertising works, rather it depends on the brief and the client. But also because he shows that most, so called, leaps forward in advertising thinking, are really different riffs on the same stuff that came before. So don’t think that ‘rational product messaging’ is wrong, nor subliminal communications, or even brand led advertising, all are right, all are wrong. I like his analysis of Byron Sharpe’s thinking as ‘do lots of publicity’ which I guess means put PR at the heart of you thinking, but I think he misses the point. He ably argues that ‘showmanship’ that bit of magic is possibly the best way to give yourself a good chance of advertising in all its forms to work, but that’s kind of Byron Sharpe too – don’t bother to differentiate, just be distinctive and get noticed.

Even stuff like native is just an ‘advertorial’ which is kind of how advertising began. Just as ad funded programmes and content are not new, the reason soap operas got their names was that soap brands funded programming that lots of people would watch weekly.

Quote books or respected sources all the time at clients. They’re either read How Brands Grow by now or they don’t want to, you don’t look clever by reading a book, you add value by applying good thinking to client’s specific problems, then claiming it for your own. Take ‘reach the whole market’. Any idiot can reach the whole market, even with moderate budgets, it’s just it will be on really bad TV programme, display ads everyone ignores on awful platforms and other stuff that delivers big numbers but has the same impact as trying to knock out a heavy weight boxer with a feather.

Quote industry research as gospel. This goes for the IPA databank as well. The data is generalised and from a ludicrously biased and small sample. It’s funny how the same strategy folks who like to dismiss research love to quote the IPA, mostly because it fits with what they want the client to buy, while research involving real people tends to spoil the argument.

WARC are at it, with analysis of their prize entries. An even smaller sample of people who entered and post rationalised their work to try and win.

Look, I’ve written award winning papers, I’ve delivered case studies to clients. I can’t remember one I’ve done that didn’t either bend the truth, leave out data that didn’t support the argument or at least pretend the process was simple and linear. When mostly, myself and the team stumbled upon the core thinking after lots of false starts, the first presentation was in-conclusive and the final approved plan wasn’t a very different version of what was originally intended.

Expect anyone to work to a brief. Creatives, media planners, content strategists, media owners. All want to put their stamp on the work. In almost every case, a good brief should major on a great objective or task, rocket fuel for the people you are briefing to get to a great solution. It should rarely be the solution itself, especially slaving over a proposition that’s a brand line in disguise. The first instinct of any creative team will be to ignore it at all costs.

I suggest an exception might be media owners here, they have a habit of trying to ‘do the strategy’ and create work that’s nothing to do with the brief, perhaps here, you should get them to follow a constricting brief exactly. My own view is that you need them to buy into what you need, which means the usual trick for them (and indeed everyone) of making think it’s all their idea. The amount of value they will throw if they believe in the project can be staggering.

You are surrounded by experts, you should hope and, to be honest, expect, the final output will make your brief look very ‘first page’ and shaky. Which it will be.

Think Powerpoint is the point. Now, I’m not saying don’t do slides, unfortunately clients expect it in many cases. But do try and avoid them unless you really are making a presentation. But don’t do slides until you have a story with a maximum of three key points. If it’s all building into three key things you want people to remember, you’re on track. It’s worth approaching from the standpoint that for every slide you create a kitten gets shot (unless you hate cats, a fairy then). That said, ignore people who simply count the number of slides and tell you it’s too many, when they haven’t seen you actually present – it’s how they support what you SAY that should be how they’re judged, the deck is not what matters, it’s what YOU deliver as a whole.

I’ve written 200 page decks for a half hour presentation where every slide was a picture. I’ve delivered two -page decks for a three hour meeting.

And if you have a boss who just looks at the slide headlines, run away from your organisation fast. If that individual writes them forward, run even faster.

April 19, 2018

Don't forget, we're all in advertising unless we're on the client side, it's just cool to call it something else these days.

1. Only read marketing and brand stuff. If you only look at industry stuff, which is what everyone else tends to do, you’ll make the same kind of work as everyone else, which, again is what everyone else tends to do. It’s good to know this, but read as much about EVERYTHING as you can, great thinking tends to connect two things in a way no one else, re-combination if you like.

2. Not get to grips about the boring bits of your client’s business. In fact, let me correct that, there is no boring stuff. The more naïve folks on the twitterweb might go on here about solving business problems rather than marketing problems.

They are right, but the reality is that most clients don’t want you to solve business problems, that is there job – the good ones would rather talk about business objectives, but they are few and far between. I don’t mean the majority are bad clients, but there’s too much experience and baggage from years of media agencies only wanting to talk about media, creative agencies fetishizing the ‘brand’, PR folks talking about fluff and so on. If you want clients to talk to you about their business, talk to them about it first.

Read the annual reports, build relationships with the non-marketing folks, and in general, respond to marketing led briefs with marketing led solutions, on the face of it, but evidence your work with business reasons, not just consumer and brand reasons.

3. Blame clients for your, and the industry’s shortcomings. It’s not entirely the fault of clients they are all going for short term digital stuff they can tick, when ad and media agencies were perfectly happy for so long to join in with the tracking conspiracy….if the activity shifts tracking scores it has worked, no matter how people have actually behaved.

Or even worse, pretends IPA Awards really showcase effective campaigns and provide a bank of data to help others do better – rather than a vault of case studies that happened to use econometrics, that the client would sign off on and that would provide a ‘story’ to the industry.

There are three ways to deliver additional payback for a marketing budget – innovation, deals to get the media for less and then the stuff between…basically knowing what you’re doing, working to the right objective, finding the right audience, creative assets that build on what people already recognise about the brand, Fame strategy etc etc.

4. Take research and data at face value. Most research is done badly and analysed even worse. Sometimes it’s not of course, but the good stuff, even focus groups can useful if conducted in the right context – for example doing football research at a football ground – and with the right objectives. Just as big data can be good if you know what you’re looking for and you know how it was collected – for example, even a sample size of million from social media is usually hopeless for understanding what most people really do, because no one shows what they’re really like on social, unless you have male friends who post how much porn they’re watching.

Listen to your boss. Seriously, it’s a flaw of human nature that we only see and appreciate facts and experiences that fit with our world view and our opinions.

In other words, we all hate being wrong and miss out on amazing feedback and ideas that challenge what already think or know. In a work situation, the higher the stakes, the more stress and more likely views and ‘knowledge’ is unshakeable. There is nothing higher stakes in an agency than running it, you are seen be their because of your experience and judgement, therefore, most bosses will be keen to give advice, asked for or not and usually it will be wrong, based on their experience and inferior knowledge of the project…and it’s harder to change their mind.

So avoid sharing work with very senior bosses and if you have no choice, involve them early, be sneaky and ‘help’ them have the ideas you want and when you shoe them something different later on, if it is, help them believe it was their ideas all along. Same with senior clients, tissue sessions are great if you do them early enough. It’s not their fault though, if you manage not to get fired for disagreeing with your boss and eventually get their job, or move to client side, you’ll do just the same, because you’re human.

5. Not listen to your boss or the people around you. Perversely, you need listen to feedback and advice as much as possible, even your boss. Your boss might just be on to something now and again, although it’s more likely that your wider team and agency partners will (if they’re the kind of people who want to be nice and good rather than ‘win).

The best ideas are rarely the flashes of insight, and even great ideas end very different to how they started out. Dyson wasn’t the only one to think of the bagless vacuum cleaner, it’s just that he was the only one to keep working on it to make it fit for the market. So don’t sit waiting for ideas to come, start working and open if your work to as much feedback as possible (apart from your boss) and kicking and screaming, the good stuff will emerge, phoenix like from the ashes of your very bad start.

Which also means don’t be precious about good ideas when they arrive, open them up to feedback, it’s the constant ‘tested to perfection’ mentality that creates standout ideas and work. It’s also why agencies that fetishise the brief, creative, media or otherwise, or clients who reject responses that are not on-brief are like runners cutting off one leg, they’re missing the chance for truly standout work -and as for dinosaur organisations that still bow and scrape to the creatives, or the TV department, or clients who never question the sophistry of brand consultancies..well you know what happened to the dinosaurs.

April 16, 2018

Assume you are not in advertising. It doesn't matter if you work in PR, digital marketing, content (ha ha), sponsorship or even 'native' you are in advertising, you are making every effort to get someone's product or service in front of people, to change their relationship with that product. You may be a goalkeeper, centre forward, midfield, sweeper or even manager, but you are still in football.

Assume you are an artist, a philosopher, anthropologist, comedian, behavioural psychologist or Stephen Speilberg. Depending on your job title, you might be a little of some of these, but the difference is, your job is to use these practices to sell things. it d

It doesn't matter if your five minute slow motion film of dancing mermaids recalls Fellini at his finest moment, if it doesn't get your client closer to a commercial result, you've wasted your client's money.

Rely on a process. There is a conspiracy among most large agencies of a variety of specialisms that a proprietary process will reliably produce outstanding work. All processes are variations on what everyone else does and only serve to make all the work variations on the theme too. It's about hard work, having an open mind and chipping away.

Believe you're better than the competition. Most agencies go to clients with the same sort of strategy and idea (see above). The trick is to make them want to buy yours because it feels different, or because they like you more.

Believe clients like you behaving like a dick. Some of the very best agencies still believe clients like them to be cool. Which is mostly true, since clients work in proper offices doing a proper job, without pink cows in receptions and concrete tables. But, some of those agencies , who create brilliant work, believe being cool means being objectionable. Some clients will accept hateful treatment if the work delivers results, but will fire you as soon as you mess up -and eventually you will. Lasting relationships are built on great work, but also mutual respect and even affection, even in these procurement led days, when you mess up, clients liking you means you get forgiven, for a while at least. It's the same working with other agencies, as soon as you make a mistake, if you've been horrific, they'll be happy to stab you in the back.

Not being nice. See point 6, but this applies to you personally and the people you work with and the people you work for. We've all worked with and for people who can work the system without being any good, or people who are good but treat the people around them like dirt. We've all worked in places where bullying, sexism and presenteeism are rife. These people eventually get found out. Once again, the job is too hard not to make a mistake, that's when you need people who have got your back, if not, expect a sharp knife between the shoulder blades. It's a small business, people talk, makes sure they say nice things.

Someone asked me recently if I know anything about how to do research. Which was funny, because when I started out learning to be a planner (I still call myself that) one of the first things I learned was how to get to grips with the research tools we had back then.

Datasets like TGI (no touchpoints then), the specifics of quant research and how to manage, pre-testing (know thine enemy) but also conduct your own qual research. I could still get away with moderating focus groups now, although I hope you, like me, would rather carry out primary research that’s a little more useful.

A little while back, experienced planning folks use to bemoan new young turks joining agencies and getting to grips with idea creation and executional tweaking rather than understanding how to manage research. It’s fair to say we had loads of folks with brilliant opinions with little to back them up.

Of course, then came digital strategists, media folks doing content strategy and now, in our present day, an ocean teaming with Big Data. To the point where I’m seeing, perversely, a huge bunch of planning and strategy folks with lots of evidence and no opinion.

Sorry, opinion is a dreadful word, I mean instinct. In fact instinct is wrong too, thanks to our behavioural bias our instincts have shit for brains. I mean judgement.

Let’s think about this. What is research these days?

We still have plenty of organisations using traditional qual and quant, with planning types staying well away. Planners were invented to not just defend agencies from the tyranny of bad research, but to use research to make better work. It seems that we’ve gone back to letting research dictate again.

Even more challenging, we’re mobilising against Big Data, trying to own that, but also being totally subservient to it also. And not questioning nearly enough.

It’s fair to say that people now leave digital trails suggesting what they do, what they like and what they think. But people are not reliable digitally, not just in focus groups.

Take social mentions, sentiment and generally platform behaviour. No one is communicating what they really think, they’re communicating what they think is the version of themselves people want to hear.

There are few pictures of Mums about to have a nervous breakdown because their baby won’t stop crying, but millions of shots of little Mummy with her angelic little angel having the time of their life.

The most common words wives post about their husbands tend to overwhelmingly positive. But google data shows the most common words associated with searched around husbands are words like ‘mean’.

But even google searches, one of the few places where people don’t fib, are not reliable. They are short term behavioural signals and they don’t capture totally what influences people.

In other words, relying just on big data might well tell you what people do, it might tell you what influences them, but it rarely tells you both at the same time and it’s mostly short term. Just like a decent planning knows how to question and shape more traditional research, the best approach to big data is to ask what it’s not telling you.

Imagination, originality and, well magic is what still builds brands, even the digital ones- Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google? They’re all investing in emotional brand advertising.

Imagination beings me to Netflix, data led entertainment. Take the wildly successful House of Cards – built from data that lots of people like political drama and Kevin Spacey. I enjoyed Stranger Things, but you can see the calculating data behind it, the love of content from the 80’s, Speilberg tropes, Goonies, ET et al plus Twin Peaks. Like a really good covers band, familiar, much loved riffs put together into something that doesn’t fire the imagination like any of the originals did – that 20% of magic.

Programmed entertainment can be really good, like to scarily life like sex robots they’re developing, will never quite match the real thing.

So what does modern research look like?

Like it always has. You can’t beat going out to meet real people in the actual environment you are trying to influence.

It’s just we have more tools.

Sometimes, that can mean ‘meeting them’ online too.

But sometimes SatNAv gets you lost and without a decent sense of direction or ability to read maps, you're pretty fucked.

It means being clear if you want to find out what they do or what influences them – how you find these things out will be different.

It means getting to grips with a world of more tools and people using and delivering them that are not planners.

Basically, like when planners were first invented, it’s about using research to inform your judgement and great better, evidence- based solutions.

April 13, 2018

I read something in the Observer at the weekend about young British people. I can’t find it and I guess you won’t bother following the link anyway

It was about a real tension and contradiction on their lives and how they go about culture, as we all know, or I hope we do, really great brands try and resolve tensions in culture.

That’s the problem with pen portraits and segmentations, or God forbid, focus groups, they try and reduce things down to simple, one dimensional observations.

Real life just isn’t like that.

If it was, I wouldn’t crave being by myself on my bike after a great holiday with the kids…..and yet miss them so much I can’t think straight if I’m away with work for more than three days.

Anyway, this article persuasively set out that the ‘hard work, growing up young, neo puritans’ side you will have heard about is live and kicking, but so is the instant gratification, show my life on Instagram, ‘Everything Now’ ‘Infinite Content’ without being content (I like Arcade Fire) side of their lives too. At once down to earth and tremendously floaty.

Who, buy the way, pity my generation for having such a boring up bringing without Wi Fi.

These two polar- opposites are real life. There’s power in contradiction, play in it.

I’m sure you’ve heard the children playing football metaphor, the one about how everyone just chases the same ball

It’s usually used by creative folks to show clients the need for distinctive creative strategy, my media agencies to show the need for thinking harder about media channels where no one else is playing…..well you get the picture.

The thing is, it’s happening more and more to agencies themselves. Creative agencies finding it hard to sell ads, so moving into the world of content, digital strategy and even media planning, while the media folks continue to move into content, pretending that data is the only answer to everything, tech and all sorts of special services, from creative designed for programmatic to the kind of partnership planning previously owned by the PR folks. Meanwhile PR folks are coming up behind with all of the above, with the advantage of knowing about influence.

And digital agencies continue to pretend that digital media is still a ‘thing’.

And the pace will only increase.

Now, you’ll be used to agencies squabbling over territory, with the familiar land grabs over core communications strategy, earned digital and the like. In the past, that was because most people in agencies never learned how to play nice. Creative agencies are possibly the biggest culprits, but I’ve worked with some very aggressive media agencies too.

But now, the battle isn’t about egos or landgrabs, it’s going to be about survival. Clients can’t be bothered to manage lots of agencies who don’t get on or try and do the same thing, it’s all a bit too complex these days and what we all do was only ever 10% of clients’ world in any case.

So we’ll winners from the organisations who can deliver great, neutral advice and ideas, nimble enough to be expert in a number of, what to be used to be known a disciplines. Planning, media and creative specialists, the consultancy folks if you like, who can’t think across the whole marketing piece will be seen like a football manager who is only any good at managing the midfielders.

There will be a small but robust group of specialists in implementation, probably the stuff that can’t be done by robots…great video production and imagery for example.

Hopefully researchers who can work across data science and ethnography, surely despite the need for arse saving in clients companies and agencies alike, we’ll see the death rattle of artificial qual like focus groups…or claimed quant survey only analysed on a short term basis (not to mention social sentiment being seen as anything but a picture of how people want to be seen, rather than what they do), I bet there’s some next generation insight gatherers who could make a lot of money.

This should be great news if you want to be stimulated, challenged and be prepared to be flexible, if you’re good or want to be. If you prepared to build value rather than follow the latest trends.

Because the thing about chasing the ball is that eventually it’s no fun and very few actually get to kick it, let alone score.

April 11, 2018

It's good being in a job that's about people. What is more interesting than the wonderful, scary, frustrating, contradictory human race? The ones in real life, not the pen portraits I mean.

It's also a constant challenge because while basic human behaviour, tech and stuff means that the culture ad folks are really competing with (not the market) is shifting faster than ever. Certainly the media, paid and otherwise we exploit to try and reach them is evolving right in front of our eyes.

And the pace is only getting faster.

Knowing when an how to adapt is the trick, and when and how not to change, but adapt we must.

The industry, your organisation and most most importantly, you.

You'll find if you don't keep your eyes and ear open that sometimes your employer has become obsolete and you go down with them.

Sometimes you wake up and see you have become obsolete in your organisation. Like the moment someone switches off a fridge and you only then notice the buzz, all of a sudden, something has been happening under your nose, your place has moved on, you haven't just like that, you don't matter any more.

This shouldn't frighten you, it should excite you. If you're a planner, wisdom rather than information (data!!!) will always matter, as will the ability to look at things in the way others don't. But how you apply that, the tools you use and who you work with is, and will continue to constantly shift. You won't get bored and if you're one those who can embrace change and also keep core competence, you'll have a fine future.

In other words, keep soaking up stuff from the world around you like always.

But keep a sharp eye on yourself, your specialism and your employer. Sometimes they need to change, sometimes you need to change, sometimes other places have magically evolved into the perfect place for you, where you're at and where you want to go.

Keep moving, like a great white shark, you'll be fine, its only when you decide to stop moving forward that the problems start.

January 31, 2018

You may have watched Finding Nemo, you may have liked it (your kids will if you have them). It's one of the most successful animated movies of all time.

It nearly flopped.

Previously, Pixar relentlessly put in an open feedback loop, on all elements of the script development of all projects. That's right, one of the most successful creative company of our times have more in common with Team Sky than you might think. Marginal gains, relentless, little improvements of all tiny aspects leading to a game changing whole. Think about it, all aspects of the creative process open to honest criticism. In fact, with it built in.

They tried to streamline the process for Nemo, and it bombed in every audience pre-test. It was only when they went back to the constructive criticism that the genius movie began to take shape.

Compare that to most agencies, creative, media or whatever...the worship of the creative types or the grand strategists, the obsession with the proposition, the simplified comms strategy or the purity of the game changing creative idea.

The worship of the beginning, the leap of insight (or the re-hashing of the obvious in many cases).

Another comparison, Lord Dyson and his game changing new hoover. He wasn't the only one to have the insight about bagless vacuums. He was just the only one who could get it to market, could get it to work. After the insight, he relentlessly prototyped until the game changing machine evolved, emerged if you like. Flashes of insight are fine, brilliant ideas that word in the real word seem to require lots of hard an failure built into the system.

The Japanese have a phrase for this, Kaizen...graduallist. Everyone in a Nissan factory is tasked with spotting little ways they can improve the whole.

You could say that proper brilliance is a little like Pointillism, a fantastic piece of work is actually made of of lots of little dots that gradually make up the bigger picture.

So, thinking about marketing services agencies that tend to pride themselves on great ideas, originality and obsession with the best work. Perhaps the truth is that they obsess with great initial ideas, but miss a trick in making them truly the best work, because they're not stress tested enough. Also, once campaigns are signed off and they get made, it could well be that they should still have room to develop.....rather than 'don't fuck with the idea'.

Maybe the lead agency, who tends to define the core strategy and creative, should welcome early feedback from partner agencies and clients alike.

God help us, maybe the tissue session in actually a good thing.

Now before you object and tell me about the magic of true creativity, I give you the myth of great poets, the romantic legends of yore. Most of them took copious amount of drugs, not to alter their mind and dredge of insights from the ether. They took drugs that let them work harder, so they could chip away at okay prose and gradually transform it into the stuff of legend.

January 23, 2018

No doubt you've heard of cognitive dissonance. The unfortunate situation where people will ignore facts when they disagree with their views, line of thinking or long cherished beliefs. They'll also jump all over the facts that support their line or argument. instead.

It's why you should be very careful when you're using any research or data, it's odds on you'll ignore the real implications and use what supports the direction of your thinking. In other words, research tends to be useless because your mind is already made up (you just don't know it is).

Just as you need to be really careful changing the minds of others, clients etc, with research - they will only believe what they want to believe.

It's amazing by the way how many strategy types are very dismissive of any research they haven't managed, but it's gospel if they've managed it. Also, think of the amount of focus group bashing that goes on from planning rockstars -compare this with the practice of using groups to support your pitch.

The big problem with cognitive dissonance is that it gets worse as the stakes get higher. Few junior account execs or planner buyers will dig their heels in arguing with the boss, not only will they get fired, their reputation at work isn't built on being right(yet), it's getting stuff done on time.

It's the agency leaders you need to watch out for. The creative directors, the heads of strategy, the social media director and the CEO's.

Not only is their entire career built on knowing more, being more expert, basically being infallible, the process means they have to land on something and then stick to it. A head of strategy will want to jump all over an insight or killer observation or comms strategy, a creative director will land on a core idea, a CEO only makes big strategic decisions, it's just they're more about the agency and less about clients. And of course, agency culture means that bigger egos and those great at persuading towards a line of argument tend to rise to the top over more thoughtful and maybe more open minded folks.

In other words, the stakes are simply higher for your boss than they are for you, and agency culture tens to lock this in as they have to make big decisions in more of the showpiece bits of agency life......they can't be seen to wrong and their personalities only make it worse.

In other words, don't trust a think your boss says. I you want to make the most of them, use their ego, their clout and their persuasive skills to sell YOUR THINKING, by helping them to think of it themselves.

January 18, 2018

"We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort or thought, and most people would die sooner that think - in fact they do so"

Bertrand Russell

Read the usual stuff in The New Scientist about how us, 'The Thinking Ape' have all been honed by years of evolution to not think that much, you know, cognitive short-cuts and all that.

You'll be bored of planning types applying this to selling to the people who buy the brands we peddle, but, as the condition sort of predicts, we're not that good to applying it to ourselves.

Not only do we all buy stuff we don't need (you don't think so? how many pair of trainers have you got and how did you choose them?), we don't apply it to how we go about the job.

Here's the list of shame, how agency types can't help thinking along the path of least resistance..

We see life as a zero sum game. Early in our evolution, with finite resources, my loss was your gain, end of story. That small piece of land we fought over for example. It's built in that we see everything as win lose, not win win. So partner agencies fight over core strategy and fall out. Clients and agencies fall out over the success or failure of a campaign rather than what worked and what didn't. Brand babblers can't see the point of response, shopper agencies talk down brand building, when both are right and both are wrong. Brands need a purpose and nothing else and so on.

Folk Knowledge. The stories we were told as kids, the rituals we followed, they stick with us. The nonsense kids pick up about animals who are think and talk like people, we can't totally shake it, any more than we have a little reverence in a Church even if we're atheists. Is there more folk knowledge in any industry like there is is in marketing land. Being brought up on rational buyers and the importance of single minded messages, or even young folks instinctively thinking that TV ads are old hat next to native or pre-rolls, this stuff is hard to shake. Hello proprietary planning processes!

Stereotyping. It's also impossible to not pigeonhole people. We evolved to judge all living things by how they look, so we knew if they eat us. Just as we judge others to quickly know if they're a threat to our status, if they'll make good baby making partners. This also means we expect planners to be a bit quiet and awkward, creatives bad tempered and temperamental and of course, UK advertising still thinks UK Mums are put upon but wily and resourceful while Dads are bumbling and useless, but their heart is in the right place. Not to mention dismissing the over 40s. What is worse, we conform to the stereotypes to fit in, creating a massive echo chamber where everyone knows their place.

Sycophancy. We're suckers for celebrity. We love status. Because back when we were monkeys, or in tribes, we deferred to the alphas and because they were the most succesful, copied what they were doing. Let's be clear, no one knows what they're doing in this business, but we have to pretend something totally unpredictable (it is because its a part of economics, can you think of an economic prediction that turned out to be true?). So we defer to our bosses and listen to rockstar planners, creatives and other gurus, who don't know what's going on, but their very success depends on looking like they do. The blind leading the blind.

The Status Quo. We've evolved to hate change. As our lives have got busier, this has only increased, we need reliable every day habits and and predictability to get through as complex world. which is why, despite what they like to peddle, agencies are horribly conservative. Coupled with the folklore we've already discussed, in many ways, it doesn't matter if it's the right or wrong answer, only that it was arrived at in the usual way.

Religion. It's the most successful social idea ever, far older than capitalism. Big groups need some sort of higher purpose to keep them together and deliver a moral compass. There's a God shaped hole in all of our brains, it's just that without God to fill it these days, we need something else, On a social level, arguably that's Brexit. On a marketing level, the Kool Aid of Disruption and Media Arts springs to mind, Maybe, Byron Sharpe is the equivalent of The God Delusion.

Next time you're on a project and in full swing as yourself, are you thinking or just telling yourself you are!!!

December 07, 2017

I want to do this partly because decent media planning is a lot tougher than many think.

Partly because today's customer avoids brand stuff more than ever, and chasing them with re-targeting and spooky Facebook ads than know who are and what you've done are not the way to go.

Partly because good channel planning works with good brand and creative thinking. There's too much infighting between creative and media agencies. The more good thinking that goes into how to reach people BEFORE making ads and stuff, or at least, working together, the better for everyone.

And finally, I've learned a lot moving into media agency land from creative world, this is much of what I've learned, only fair to share with more creative minded planners, as those jobs continue to fade away, this might be a start of a Plan B.

So let’s start with a cliché that happens to be true.

Brands don’t exist in a bubble, they are part of culture and part of life. As culture changes, so therefore do brands and how they try and connect to people. Because in reality, brands are mostly a way to help us get through life without thinking too hard, perhaps the golden rule here is humility, assuming that no one really cares. Even the Guccis and Nikes of this world are not as important as your friends or the new Star Wars release, they’re not thought about that much and compete with other status symbols or tools for sporting confidence.

It’s also about behaviour, not just eyeballs. The context of where you decide to try and connect with people, your media ‘body language’ really matters. Just as it’s doubtful you would try and chat someone up in McDonalds, but likely you would try in a bar, when and where you decide to do things can matter as much as the creative work. Don’t believe the simplification that it’s just about reach, that’s the same as saying you just need to make people ‘aware of the brand’. I’m very aware of Donald Trump but believe me, I’m not a fan.

Now, like I said, life and culture changes. When I was growing up in the 80s there were four UK TV channels, then it was just the case of deciding over papers, magazine. Outdoor and radio…and direct mail of course. No wonder media folks were always down the pub, it was bloody easy. But culture moves on, people want more choice, they’re used to watching and reading what they want when they want.

It’s very, very complex. You can reach someone anywhere if you want. But don’t discount the unwritten deal you’ve made with people. They still know that if they watch TV for free, or at a small price, the cost is being exposed to advertising. The same with commercial radio, the same with the price of print and digital newsbrands. They don’t get that with social and also outdoor, which is polluting your out and about. Spam is still spam.

All that complexity requires pretty hard questions to cut through what you could do and get to what you should do.

Who?

What?

Where?

When?

Why?

How?

The when and where become critical as people control their own schedule. But ‘how’s is just as important as the channels themselves.

Channel planning is about how to influence what happens in people heads, not just ‘reaching them’. I can ‘reach’ some very good looking women in high end bars if I want, trust me, I can’t influence them to talk to me.

So you need:

AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDING

KILLER INSIGHTS THAT UNLOCK THE BRIEF

THE ROLE FOR COMMUNICATIONS

CHANNEL IDEAS: CONTEXT & CONDUCT

THEN PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

So…to audience understanding.

It’s quite simple and quite hard. You need to select an audience depending on how they interact with the category, your brand and even life.

This is based on work you should have done already…..what are you actually trying to do? What is the barrier to brand growth?

Then you drill into who this in among and the right audience to change this.

One of the most famous examples of car advertising was this Skoda campaign – the audience wasn’t just Skoda considerers, as they were already okay with the brand, it was rejecters who were stopping them by laughing at them.

Look at this famous economist campaign that was mostly outdoor. These days some idiots would tell you to do a tightly targeted display campaign aimed at people interested in current affairs and over a certain net worth. But this only worked because it was wasteful – intentionally seen by the public to ‘celebrate economist readers in front of the less enlightened’.

Sometimes it’s removing barriers. Sky TV used to promote movies and kids channels to the partners of the men who mostly buy for the sport so they could get sign off.

Old Spice here targets both men AND women. Buyer and consumer.

As a rule of thumb, don’t make the mistake of replicating the creative target too tightly. That should be tightly defined and, in many ways, conceptual. You want to build a picture in the audience’s mind of ‘who buys this’ – something usually a little aspirational. Media is most efficient when it reaches as much of the buying market as it can. Persil Mums never really washed whiter and loads of fat over 35 men buy Lynx. In FMCG, if your target audience varies more than 3% from the category profile, you’re being too narrow.

Put another way, is your audience big enough to answer the brief? Get the client to share any awareness to consideration to sales data they have, look at past work they’ve done on how advertising build awareness (I should say salience really that’s the only thing that matters). Look at the frequency of purchase and a whole host of other things. But to be honest, build the broadest audience you can afford.

Look at their lives, what is the most relevant place for the brand to show up (even TV, ITV does the numbers in the UK but if you want to appear cool and ‘discovered’ look at other channels and more innovation).

Consider that brands that connect closer to the point of purchase convert more – but also consider if you want context for the category buying behaviour or the creative idea. What I love about Old Spice is that it does both….the buying conversation and creative conversation are both about women buying things for men. Think about that, think the fact there is no such thing as a brand ad, only communication that addresses reasons people don’t buy. Even if that’s brand awareness, just because it doesn’t’ occur to them, doing stuff that isn’t relevant to the brand, no matter how much it’s recalled won’t cut the mustard.

The real task for us all is getting into the front of mind in as many situations as possible, that won’t happen if they don’t remember the brand and just remember the ad, and it won’t even then unless they can connect the ad to how they behave or feel about the category.

So, in a world where the audience filters our more brands than, don’t fall for the hubris of brand first, embrace people and go audience first – at least for channel planning.

How can you add value to their experience rather than interrupt or make it worse. Yes, it’s true that advertising people don’t like will work if you reach them often enough (based on shorter term metrics), but stuff people like can be more effective by nearly 11 times according to the IPA…and decent econometrics shows great advertising pays back over 3-5 years. The further out from exposure, the more folks remember only how they felt. We all tend to do and buy the things that feel right, not what are right in a logical sense.

Now, the best way to unlock the brief is still a killer insight. Doesn’t have to be a consumer one though, it just has to be an observation that you know will make people go, “Oh yeah!” At once obvious and refreshing.

This is rarely a stat. And while we’re at it, logic and evidence rarely work with clients and certainly not your buyers. And insight gets into the heart, where most decisions are really made. I don’t mean that brand love rubbish, I mean you take notice and makes you feel something that lasts in the memory.

And no bloody generalisations…like ‘young people like music’. No point using insights everyone else is talking about, like the fact young people are very serious minded and hard work is cool. Everyone knows this.

For example, few brands seem to cotton on to the fact that British Mums are sick of the protective parent label and are sick of the knowing, arch eye-browed resourceful one who sorts out the issues created by bumbling Dads. In fact, they hate their partners being portrayed this way. It may well be that a brand celebrating Dads rather than dissing them might work well with Mums.

A powerful observation is that stats mean nothing to people in charity campaigns. Most charities try to use ONE person as an emotional example, but the truth is, most stuff hits home when it happens to someone you really care about. I think this is fascinating for brands that sell stuff too, it’s how celebrity endorsement works.

Once you’ve got a tight insight, you need to have a clear role for communications. It will set your media (and maybe beyond) behaviour. It will drive direction and drive ideas.

It should never be something general…like ‘celebrate life’. It should be specific, audience driven and create a clear context for the media and other activity.

Instead of celebrate life it could be ‘shake up young people’s view of the world by delivering the joy of life outside the filter bubble’ (I’d like to do this by the way).

Or even better, connect with today’s young fogies when they want to remember they’re young.

THEN you can look at channels.

Some of this should be based on what, when and how the audience consumes media and life of course.

But it should be informed by challenge you are addressing and how comms is dealing with it.

The filter bubble idea above means you need to look at the times your audience goes outside the filter bubble…..when they’re engaging in mass media that isn’t ‘pre-selected’, when they’re looking to discover stuff. You might want to also want to ‘do it’ rather than promote it. That might mean the entire media plan is built on the element of surprise.

You could go further and build integrated idea around the fact we adopt new things that are just familiar enough. Have you seen ‘I’ve never seen Star Wars’. The entire media plan could be built on this premise.

But arriving at your list of channels and what to do with them requires rigour and hard questions.

Start again with you role for comms and turn that into three specific tasks (more than that is just a list, less is too narrow).

For the filter bubble thing that might be:

Land the idea where people come to together outside the filter bubble – TV, VOD, MAYBE out of home and mass experiential events

Where can we be relevant? If we’re interrupting can we reward the attention? Are we able to be specific to the channel we’re using? What will people think/feel/do as a result?

And don’t forget looking at context. From selling a new water brand when people are most thirsty, to landing a new brand idea when it will have the most emotional punch.

You could even be topical, but in a new way. In the UK, the most likely birth times are September/October. Much of this is down to conception on New Years Eve, or in boring January where you’ve nothing else to do. Great context for condom brands, pregnancy test brands and also Pampers. Creatively fertile as well as media context.

If you want an over 35 married man to out on a ‘male’ get together, be that footie, the cimema or even laser quest, he needs sign off from the other half and it needs to be agree weeks in advance.

Then pull that all together into a simple one pager. Media and comms strategy needs to be complex these days because the environment is complex. But if you can’t explain in 30 seconds, you haven’t got something water tight.

To for example:

We need to get our brand tried by under aged 25 people

The problem is that they only try things from within their filter bubble – more of the same

So that means we need to shake up their view of the world by showing them the world outside of their feeds

We’ll use TV that’s big enough to reach them and cool enough to be credible to land the idea outside the bubble – contextual ads to objects and situations in the programming that inspire them to try just a little outside their comfort zone (even I like one Queen song and I hate Queen)

We’ll partner with Google so that in search and Youtube, they get served familiar but exciting alternatives just outside their comfort zone, endorsed by video influencers

Most ad campaigns are, at best solid. Most don't get entered into IPA Effectiveness Awards. And yet the IPA Databank is venerated as some kind of list of Golden Rules. Simply, it's another way to look like we all know what we're doing.

That's why, for an industry built on ideas and new thinking, we're horribly conservative. No one wants the apple cart upset, you know, look like the rules and guidelines are great, when everyone works in chaos and then makes it fit the accepted wisdom.

You might think this is dispiriting.

You shouldn't.

Byron Sharpe kind of helps, but even there. the data often looks to fit the argument. The great disruption is beginning to turn into accepted received wisdom.........we all need a story to sell after all.

So yes, TV is dead, or it isn't. Programmatic is not to trusted, or it is. Young people hate advertising, until they do. Media agencies are going to be extinct when robots take over.

The reality right now is people know what's going on less than ever.

Which means every person working in this industry has the chance to invent the future. In fact, no they don't. They have the chance to do what the hell they like.

The role of planning folk was never be the voice of the consumer really, it certainly isn't now there are more kinds of planners then there are grains of sand in the Sahara Desert. It was, and is, to get the best ideas out of others and make those ideas palatable and seem predictable to client partners.

Because, Back to that Why Things Fail book. The best chance of avoiding extinction is to continually innovate - but as a rule, perhaps you should ignore that too!

November 02, 2017

It shows you how the British are looking for any excuse to indulge these days, in a world where sobriety is cool.

It shows how parents are under pressure to perform like never before. Have a prefect party, the kids dressed just so, the perfect image on Faceook.

This picture though was on our own trick or treat run. A pumpkin the size of a car. to out do the other decorations on the street. It's a bit like advertising these days.

There's a truth that folks are getting wise to the act, especially young folks. They're becoming adept at filtering out the annoying dross. Like the 'impression' some media agency will count as a hit, which in reality is an annoying display ad that may as well not be there.

Or the massive grandstanding campaigns that still happen.

Walking down a street at Halloween with the increasingly , competitively, decorated houses is like the desperation of brands with ever bigger grandstanding efforts to get the attention, with this picture the apotheosis.

All the more ignored because of its blunt desperation. Like women avoiding those overdressed guys in nightclubs furtively dancing with the white man's overbite, people can smell the desperation.

Once upon a time, even when you could buy interruption, as opposed to the JWT fear model (Domestos ads let you know about the nasty germs in your toilet, scaring you into buying), some opted for charm and intelligence as opposed to calculation or brute force. Maybe we need to think about going back to that a bit.

November 01, 2017

It's amazing how folks talk about post truth and fake news, because when it comes to persuading people, facts have always been a bit useless.

Fox Mulder from the X-Files was on to something. It's about the desire for something to be right, no more, no less.

It's a bitter truth about people that we make up our mind and then find the facts to fit. Blame evolution, no one had time to evaluate the evidence of being eaten by a Sabre Tooth Tiger, they just saw big teeth and claws and legged it.

Mostly, we decide things based on a long build up of experience, frame of reference and general world view. Facts are simply used to fit what we already believe or what we already want.

Worth thinking about when you navigate your own life, you won't change people's minds however good your evidence, in fact, you'll probably reinforce their beliefs. It takes a much longer build up of experiences, references and general change of world view...and changing how they feel before you change what they believe.

Which makes the role of a planner a hell of a lot more complicated than the textbooks would have you believe. Most research is, of course, a waste of time because what people do is very different to what they say.

But the role of research in dirty planning is also a waste of time. You know, making the research make the ideas, plan or whatever easy to buy. Because if the facts don't fit with what the client believes, they'll reject your thinking. Just as creatives, media buyers, suits or whoever else will reject your carefully developed, insight based strategy and briefing if it's at odds with what they have in mind.

It also means the role of value propositions in advertising, and reasoned arguments in general are waste of time with target audiences. No will believe you if they want to.

In other words, you have to be a lot more cunning.

The role of a planner and the role of most advertising is making people want to believe things, or think things without knowing they do. Clients, consumers, everyone.

Don't make the mistake of finding out what people think and then trying to change their mind, make it easy for them by finding out what they WANT to believe, or what they want to do, and making that fit your own agenda.

It's why most advertising works in the long term. It's not just that people are light buyers and so on, it's that changing what people think and how they feel about something takes time.

Or in the case of short term response stuff, getting the hell out the way and getting people who have already decided to buy to do it now.

It's why the most efficient predictor or advertising effectiveness is likeability. If you really like the ads, you'll then find the facts to fit why you want to buy stuff.

It's why borrowed interest, cultural appropriation and sponsorship can be so powerful. If it's familiar and fits with what we know, but retains just enough novelty, we'll give it a go.

Of course, now I've told you all this, you'll want to believe the opposite.

In this industry, you'll get told no more than yes. You'll get all sorts of knock backs.

A lot of the time it won't be fair. That's because there is not such thing as THE right thing to do, there is no such thing as an unarguable logic. There are only half truths in research, patterns in data and people's world view.

You'll get made redundant probably. People will get promoted above you.

Pick yourself and forensically understand what went wrong so it never happens again. Don't pretend when it goes well it was all perfect either.

Some people get to the top through route two with a great strength of will and even more luck. But they fizzle out, it's knackering fighting everyone all the time.

Most of the people who get somewhere follow path three. They know stuff wasn't fair, but they learn they could have manipulated events and people to get another result (for example, creatives will always ignore the brief and try and do the opposite, there's a lot to be said for getting them to think of stuff for themselves).

They also learn to discern when actually, it was totally fair and they were not up to scratch. This always the hardest, it's much easier to blame everything but your own approach, sub-standard work or sometimes even lack of talent.

Believe me I know, I was told more than once I would never cut it as a great account man and chose to ignore the advice, failing twice before I realised I should be a planner. It was easier to get angry than to get real.

Anyway, you end up with two kinds of successful agency folk.

The first is the incredible operator who can read people and situations and always knows what buttons to push and what not to. They know they are not the best at the craft skills but manage to surround themselves with great people, get the best out of them and recognise their contributions. They're usually fully aware they're not the best and try to make the most of themselves.

The second is the craftsperson who has chipped away at the big rock of their talent, learning from each project, what worked, what didn't, what got great things to happen and what got in the way. Confident of course, they're never arrogant and ever ready to listen to others and bang their own heads against a brick wall to turn good into great. They might be shy, but learn to let their passion for their work shine out and infect others. They usually think they're nowhere near as good as they really are, so always end up doing great stuff because they try harder....and never look like a show off either.

Some bastards are combination of both.

One thing both have in common is that they've learned to be resilient, to welcome knock backs and, above all else, never ever lose their cool.

One tip for getting there.

No one, I mean no one, knows what they're doing. Everyone burns inside wondering what on earth they're really doing. This isn't physics, it's not even law where there are rules and truths for everyone to conform to. This job is about influencing people to want things they don't really need - unpredictable human beings.

Throw in the messiness of culture and there are no rules, simply theories that sometimes produce great results but often fail too. It's quite liberating to always sympathise with the individual who is ruining your life at this precise moment, rather than want to eviscerate them, know they're like you too, they haven't got a clue (even if they don't know it sometimes). Think about what's going inside - what is really driving them, what are they afraid of, how has their day been going?